Downsizing Thanksgiving

This will be the second year in a row my immediate family has celebrated a very scaled-down Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t remember exactly why we didn’t produce the usual large extended family Thanksgiving get-together last year. I think it was a combination of no one wanting to commit to hosting a big spread, some relatives…

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The Crown Returns…or taking a trip back to the 80’s.

I have been waiting all year for November to finally arrive. No, I’m not talking about the presidential election–the excruciatingly overwrought drama that refuses to end. Yes, by all verified accounts we did elect a new POTUS. But the current one is clearly refusing to accept the fact that his reality tv show has been…

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Beer Cheese…or giving pretzels a new twist

I know Oktoberfest was last month but I’m still feeling those beer and warm pretzel vibes, especially on cool nights parked on the sofa watching sports or, like me, binging on Netflix. Last year I was all about the garlic pretzel bites–easily poppable by the handful. This year, I’ve step up my pretzel game, adding…

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Keeping it simple…or the benefits of NOT reinventing the wheel.

The directive was straightforward–make a brownie that was the perfect marriage of crusty exterior and fudgy interior. Simple, right? Except it wasn’t…not by a long shot. I, and countless other fans of The Great British Baking Off, watched in horror and disbelief as one contestant after another failed, some rather miserably, to bake an even…

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Leaning into comfort baking season…

The thing about living in the Bay Area is that even with our so-called “micro-climates” we often barely notice a perceptible change in seasons. It’s October and yesterday it was about 80 degrees in the Outer Sunset. I made smoked salmon and avocado sushi for lunch, avoiding the stove entirely. Don’t even talk to me…

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Pizza Rolls, Pot Pies, and Pop Tarts…or the Three P’s of Bake Sale

Okay, technically the pizza roll was really a Southern Italian specialty called the n’figgiulata or as my friend and former coworker Maria affectionately called “n’figgy”–a Vivande Porta Via catering menu staple. In trying to describe what the n’figg was to bake sale customers, I invariably resorted to calling it a big pinwheel pizza roll stuffed…

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Bake Sale Diary

This past weekend was a blur of Taiwanese spicy beef hand pies, Meyer lemon pudding cakes, chocolate salted caramel trifles, cheddar scallion biscuits, and guava passion cakes…lots of them. You see I decided to hold a virtual bake sale and let’s just the say the response was surprising and overwhelming. It was an idea that…

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Gateau Chocolat Royale under a burnt orange sky

If there’s one thing the last six months have taught me is that there is a razor thin line between reality and hyperbole. I have to stop saying things like “as if things couldn’t get any weirder” because, invariably, they do. In San Francisco, we all woke up Wednesday morning to oppressively murky skies the…

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“We’re having a heat wave…(not) a tropical heat wave…”

I knew the weekend was going to be a scorcher, but being out in the Sunset I thought we’d be spared much of the intense heat. In relative terms that’s been true. Instead of the 106 degrees in San Jose, it was around 90 in my neighborhood–but 90 without A.C.–so not much motivation to cook,…

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School Night Suppers

I came across this old class photograph from my kindergarten class in Hong Kong today. That’s me in the front row, second from the right. I was about four years old I think. Memories of those early school days play in my head like a Netflix trailer–snippets of highlights that offer me a glimpse into…

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